As my client walks his girlfriend through the airport to her gate, she turns to say how excited she is to explore a new city, and sees tears rolling down his face.She had no idea these were tears of love, tears of personal growth.
Her questioning goes unanswered, as he can't seem to pull it together to explain what he is feeling. All he knows is that he's in great pain, and wants it to stop.He tries to smile, to say that he's really going to miss her, but the words just get stuck in his throat.
As the time nears for her to go, she tells him that everything will be alright, and that she'll be back in a week and the time will just fly. He nods his head, but his heart won't have any of this rationalization, the rationalization of feelings. His love has gotten so deep, so fast he thinks, that maybe he's just crazy. Or worse, a total wimp.
He sits in front of me the very next day, ashamed that the tears keep coming. I counsel him to let them flow, if it takes an hour, it takes an hour, just let them flow. Ten minutes later, his face is beaming as he tells me how much he loves her. How happy he is that she gets to travel to explore another new city on a regular basis, as this is the fuel that keeps her creativity and passion for life flowing.
All he needed to get to this newfound joy, was to have someone allow him to cry. To feel the depth of love and express it. He just needed someone to say it's ok for men to feel deeply, to miss someone deeply, and to express this in tears. That's all he needed.
It's been a while now since her last trip, and the relationship has blossomed deeper than they could have ever imagined. She joined him for one of our sessions, and sat in shock as he told her, with tears in his eyes, how much he missed her on all of her past trips. How deeply he loved her. As instructed, her role was simply to sit with him, say nothing, and accept his tears as a beautiful form of love. Within minutes, because she could not tell him to stop, or that everything would be ok, she began to feel the depth that he was expressing from, and tears just streamed down her face.
She finally felt the deepest love she could have ever imagined feeling.
For most of us in life, we've been taught to stay away from the pain associated with feeling the depths of our emotions. Well meaning moms,dads and lovers who try to get their children or partners to stop crying when they are afraid, or sad, do so because they do not want to feel the other persons pain.
Instead of sitting with a child or lover who is in discomfort, holding them while they cry, we do the worst thing imaginable.
We say things like,"It's all going to be ok....stop crying, everything will be better soon...it's not really that bad, you're just making it seem bigger than it is."
Let's go in a new direction starting today. Sit with their pain. Don't discard it, don't blow it off. Like my clients girlfriend, you might have to learn how to feel deeper than you ever have, by simply being quite and sitting with the discomfort. I know if you do this, you will begin to experience life at a whole new level. An amazingly beautiful level. One where true love resides.
To reach new heights of personal growth, let your tears flow. Let someone elses tears flow. Let tears of love be shared with those you really care for.
Slow down.
Love, peace David Essel www.davidessel.com
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